The bishop on the long diagonal
It is pronounced fee-an-KET-oh, from the Italian for little flank. The move takes the bishop that has the least to do and hands it the longest line on the board.
- Said fee-an-KET-oh
- Italian for little flank
- Squares b2, g2, b7, g7
- Openings King's Indian, Dragon, Grunfeld, Catalan
A fianchetto is a bishop developed to b2, g2, b7 or g7. You push the knight's pawn one square, the bishop drops into the hole behind it, and from there it looks along a diagonal eight squares long that runs straight through the middle of the board into the enemy camp.
It costs a tempo more than a normal developing move, because you play a pawn move and then a piece move to reach one square. What you buy with that tempo is permanence. A bishop on c4 gets hit by a pawn eventually. A bishop on g7 usually sits there for the whole game.
What the bishop is actually pointing at
From the first move. Black hands White a big pawn centre and then fianchettos the bishop to shoot at it.
1.d4 Nf6 2.c4 g6 3.Nc3 d5 4.cxd5 Nxd5 5.e4 Nxc3 6.bxc3 Bg7 7.Nf3
The g7 bishop is aimed through f6 and e5 at the pawn on d4, with the pawn on c3 sitting behind it. That is the whole opening in one piece.
The same position, with the bishop's legal moves drawn. Five squares, and one of them is the pawn on d4.
Most of the time the diagonal is not this clean. In the King's Indian and the Sicilian Dragon the same bishop sits on g7 with a knight of its own on f6 in the way, and the entire middlegame is about clearing the line: trading on d4, playing the knight to d7 or e5, breaking with ...e5 or ...c5. The bishop is not doing nothing while it waits. It is the reason the break works when it comes.
What happens when it gets traded off
A fianchettoed bishop is also the only piece guarding the squares around your king on its own colour. Trade the g7 bishop away and f6, h6 and g7 have no defender left, and no other piece you own can cover all three.
That is not a theory. It is the Yugoslav Attack against the Dragon, where White plays Be3, Qd2 and then Bh6 for no reason other than to remove that bishop, follows with h4 and h5, and mates on the h-file. The same idea drives most kingside attacks against a fianchetto. If your opponent goes to enormous trouble to swap one bishop, that is what they are buying.
- Recapture towards the centre when the bishop is traded, and try to get a knight to f6 or f8 to cover the holes it leaves.
- Avoid the trade if you can do it cheaply. In the Dragon, ...h5 and ...Bh8 both exist for exactly this reason.
- If you have the fianchettoed bishop and your opponent does not, opening the diagonal is usually worth a pawn.
- A fianchetto with your own pawn stuck on the bishop's colour, on d4 or e5 or c3, is how a fianchettoed bishop turns into a bad bishop.
Questions people ask
How do you pronounce fianchetto?
Fee-an-KET-oh, with a hard k in the middle. It is an Italian word, so the ch is said like a k rather than like the ch in church, and the stress falls on that third syllable. The plural you will see in books is fianchettoes or fianchettos; both are used and nobody minds. It comes from fianco, meaning flank, so the word literally means little flank.
Is the fianchetto good for beginners?
Yes, with one caution. It is easy to play, the bishop rarely gets attacked, and the structure is the same in a lot of different openings, which means less to remember. The caution is that a fianchetto is slow, so it works better as a system you understand than as a way to avoid learning any opening at all.
Should I fianchetto both bishops?
Usually not. Double fianchetto is playable and there are strong players who build a whole repertoire on it, but it takes four moves and neither bishop fights for the centre directly. One fianchetto plus a normally developed bishop covers both colours and gets you castled sooner.
Related
Fianchetto sits under Pieces and squares in the reference. Nearby: